he was a former advertising man who joined the air force and the cia, and he was sent to the philippines in the late 1940s when they were facing rebellion, one of the major communist uprisings of the postworld war ii period. and what he did was he didn't send an army to back them up, he simply drove out into the boob docks to -- boondocks to get to know the people in the embassy. he went out there to figure out what was really going on, and the most important thing that he did was he identified a great leader who could lead the philippines out of this morass are some support. and that was ramon -- [inaudible] who was a, just a filipino senator when he encountered him. lansdale pushed to make him the first defense minister and then the president. and he was this great leader who rooted out a lot of the corruption which was causing people to turn away from the philippine government. he ended the brutality on the part of the filipino army which was causing villagers to flee into the hands of the hucks. he established clean elections, and he basically took away all of the ideological appeal